Seattle Schools Community Forum

There was a request to open another thread about the connections between school budgets and "underenrollment."  I am hearing from several schools that the district is saying their school is below the enrollment forecast and will be funded that way (even as many have had waitlists in the past and the district continues to grow). I suspect the district is playing chicken, hoping that there will be even growth that would not throw any one school's budget off.  They want to pinch those pennies and force principals to make the hard decisions and/or have to beg PTAs for help.  If you know parents who have school-aged children they want to enroll in Seattle schools, beg them to do it before this school year ends.  No one wants to come to school in the fall and have an unpleasant surprise about the level of support at their school.

CFO Bob Boesche sent Dorothy Neville a reply and a follow-up to her questions about understaffing and its ramifications on the first day of school.  I personally was a bit confused by some of his answers and I guess the only answer at this point is to wait and see.  But, keep in mind, the Board and the staff knew that any poor outcomes were entirely possible and did nothing to protect the most likely to be overenrolled schools. His first e-mail said this (and I edited it down): The attached document should provide additional specifics, but I want to clarify that this is not a "hiring freeze" in the traditional sense. Hiring freezes are often long-term in nature. In this case, we will be making key adjustments within the first two weeks of the school year. Decisions will be based upon actual enrollment, addressing schools which are under, as well as over, in staffing. In the past, SPS often did not take away staff at schools which were under-enrolled. We can no lon...